Abstract

Forecasting U.S. mortality is challenging due to its irregular development. Since the 1990s, men have experienced stronger increases in life expectancy than women. Prospective forecasts up to 2050 generated using the Lee-Carter model and three of its variants illustrate that an extrapolation of this trend involves not just the risk of forecasting only moderate gains in life expectancy, but also the risk of forecasting that men will outlive women in the long run. Jointly forecasting mortality trends of multiple (sub)populations appears to be the key to averting such implausible developments in the model of Hyndman et al. and in our model. Since we also (1) forecast the rates of mortality improvement (to catch dynamic age shifts in survival improvement) and (2) select reference countries in terms of their (a) overall level of mortality, (b) risk factor attributable mortality, and/or (c) cultural and political proximity, our model can also forecast long-term trend changes and accelerating increases in life expectancy.

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Acknowledgments

The European Research Council has provided financial support under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement no. 263744.

References

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